Cloud Solution Architecture at Microsoft Corporation

Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology company with headquarters in Redmond, Washington. It develops, manufactures, licenses, supports, and sells computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services. Its best known software products are the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, the Microsoft Office suite, and the Internet Explorer and Edge web browsers.

At Microsoft our mission and values are to help people and businesses throughout the world realize their full potential.

Job Position: Cloud Solution Architecture – Data and Analytics

Job Location: Lagos

Job Description

1. Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.
2. As employees we come together with a growth mindset, innovate to empower others and collaborate to realize our shared goals. Each day we build on our values of respect, integrity, and accountability to create a culture of inclusion where everyone can thrive at work and beyond.
3. The CSA role is responsible for driving customer satisfaction in adopting and effective use of Microsoft’s cloud platforms, consumption, growth with using the array of Cloud services, and the governance of delivery for their portfolio of accounts.
4. We are looking for a highly motivated and passionate Data Platform & Advanced Analytics Cloud Solution Architect to drive high priority customer initiatives on the Microsoft Azure Platform in collaboration with customers and the Microsoft field in Enterprise accounts segment of our business.
5. This is a customer facing role, owning overall technical relationship between customer and Microsoft Data, Advanced Analytics Platform.
6. You will own the Data Platform & Advanced Analytics technical support for both pre and post sales including architectural design sessions, specific implementation projects, build MVPs and trouble solving and prevent the issues and support to build more efficient systems with Well-Architect framework.
7. The ideal candidate will have experience in customer-facing roles and success leading deep technical architecture discussions with senior customer executives, Enterprise Architects, IT Management and Developers to drive Data Platform and Advanced Analytics solutions to productions.
8. This role is flexible in that you can work up to 50% from home.

Job Responsibilities
Customer Centricity:

1. Gathers customer/partner insights (e.g., feedback around technical preferences, environments, business needs, competitive landscape), and maps architecture and digital transformation solutions to customer/partner business outcomes.
2. Acts as the voice of the customer (VOC)/partner by driving new feedback, insights, and resources across internal teams to add and prioritize.
3. Represents the customer/partner to internal teams (e.g., Engineering) to shape products and services by providing insights across the territory.
4. Advocates for the customer/partner at all opportunities and shares customer success stories with the wider internal team.
5. Develops and expands existing impactful relationships with customer and partner architects and technical specialists, technical decision makers (TDMs), and business stakeholders.
6. Receives and synthesizes data about customer/partner business and technical requirements, addresses them with technical architecture(s), and demonstrates and proves those solutions’ capability and value through design collaboration sessions with the customer/partner.
7. Contributes to and understands how work aligns with customer success plan and meets customer/partner needs by partnering with the appropriate internal teams and resources to deliver customer outcomes.
8. Supports customer skilling by delivering as a trusted technical advisor to ensure customer readiness by facilitating technical discussions and enabling operational health and cloud readiness.
9. Assesses and transfers knowledge to close customer skill gaps.
10. Guides other team members to focus on customer/partner experience through efficient delivery and ensuring a seamless and connected customer experience. Supports definition of customer/partner conditions of success. Anticipates customer/partner dissatisfaction and unmet needs and executes strategies to improve experience, value realization, and acceleration of customer transformation.
11. Actively listens and respectfully challenges customers/partners when going in the wrong direction, presents insights and alternatives, and takes action appropriately.

Business Impact:

1. Identifies and anticipates issues and advises customers/partners to operate and optimize performance in accordance with Microsoft best practices.
2. Adapts methodology and applies governance to identify, communicate, and minimize business and technical risks.
3. Adheres to quality assurance standards and calculates risks while ensuring excellence in the design and/or delivery of solutions. Leverages standard tools to ensure accurate opportunity and milestone execution and pipeline hygiene.
4. Drives customer/partner relationships to anticipate, identify, escalate, and work to resolve technical blockers to accelerate consumption and solution implementations (e.g., by application of technical capabilities).
5. Routes non-technical issues for removal by the appropriate party.
6. Applies broad business and technical knowledge across various architecture or other Microsoft solutions to meet business and information technology (IT) requirements and resolve identified technical constraints.
7. Shapes and enhances customers’ requirements.
8. Proactively uses knowledge of the products, services, and value propositions of Microsoft and its competitors in customer/partner conversations to identify growth opportunities based on knowledge of customer/partner needs.
9. Contributes to increase in consumption and aligns with Customer Success Account Management or other Account Team members on customer/partner priorities to drive growth in consumption via cost optimization, operational excellence performance efficiency, and security.
10. Drives architecture design, resiliency reviews, and technical optimization that result in production deployment application and increase customer/partner usage and consumption.
11. Ensures that the customer/partner’s application has as few points of failure as possible.
12. Consults and provides thought leadership for technical solution design, development, and deployment and supports the customer/partner throughout implementation to achieve value outcomes and Microsoft’s Customer Promise.
13. Understands industry trends and the competitor’s architecture solutions and identifies Microsoft’s strengths over competitive solutions to drive conversations with customers/partners and convince them of solution.

Technical Leadership:

1. Proactively develops technical and professional learning and development plan in alignment with and support from their manager. Role models effective technical readiness.
2. Acts as a mentor and role model to less experienced colleagues to educate them on technical and non-technical concepts. Participates in development opportunities (e.g., Ready, Build, Ignite).
3. Shares ideas, insights, and strategic technical input with technical teams, internal communities across the field, and the larger virtual team across Microsoft using a thorough knowledge of specific Microsoft products and their context in the competitive landscape.
4. Participates in external technical community events (e.g., conferences, seminars, technical meetups, Webcasts, blogs, hackathons) and shares learnings with the internal team.
5. Generates new ideas for changes and improvements to existing intellectual property (IP), technologies, and processes for designated customers/partners. Drives opportunities for IP reuse, best practice sharing, and consumption acceleration.
6. Proactively identifies gaps through delivery and communicating those gaps to others (e.g., Leadership, managed intellectual property [MIP], Design, and Governance).
7. Applies subject matter expertise to develop new IP that fills identified gaps.

Job Requirements
Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, Business, or related field AND 4+ years experience in cloud/infrastructure technologies, information technology (IT) consulting/support, systems administration, network operations, software development/support, technology solutions, practice development, architecture, and/or consulting
  • OR equivalent experience.

Additional or Preferred Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, Business, or related field AND 8+ years experience in cloud/infrastructure technologies, information technology (IT) consulting/support, systems administration, network operations, software development/support, technology solutions, practice development, architecture, and/or consulting
  • OR Master’s Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, Business, or related field AND 6+ years experience in cloud/infrastructure technologies, technology solutions, practice development, architecture, and/or consulting
  • OR equivalent experience.
• 4+ years experience working in a customer-facing role (e.g., internal and/or external).
• 4+ years experience working on technical projects.
• Technical Certification in Cloud (e.g., Azure, Amazon Web Services, Google, security certifications).

How to Apply
Interested and qualified candidates should:
Click here to apply online